


ego death

by pineapplejuice



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Dreams vs. Reality, Dreamscapes, Gen, Joseph Kavinsky Lives, ego death, joseph fights himself and someone wins, near literally haha, well. one does
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:41:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25964527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pineapplejuice/pseuds/pineapplejuice
Summary: joseph kavinsky does not die- he runs away into himself, into his own dreams. where he cannot run from finding himself any longer
Kudos: 2





	ego death

**Author's Note:**

> ego death: the absence and destruction of the old self  
> -replaced by the emerging new

It is the Fourth of July when Joseph Kavinsky wakes, the Fourth of July when everything clicks into place within the place within and everything whirrs to life. It is the Fourth of July when his being starts again at last, when he feels the sunlight on his face, not the first time he has felt it for the first time. Maybe if he thought about it more, if he lent his subconscious more staying power, he would note the light not sunlight after all, not the true warmth of the real but the unnerving not-quite of the false. 

It is the Fourth of July here, though, and Joseph believes it. He believes in it more than he does in himself, and that is his fallacy.

The Fourth of July is a small room- brown walls of exposed, unpainted wood. Not finished, like him. Broken, like him. The nightstand next to him is cracked. He puts a hand to it, and it falls away into pieces of fractured china. He feels instinctively that maybe it should not do that, but who is he to say what something should or should not do? 

The bed is worn, but in better condition than the rest, the ripped sheets soaked in his own sweat and thrown aside like himself. Perhaps this room is an allegory for the making of him, the downfall of him, the state of being- No. He does not want to think, and so he doesn't.

He hears fireworks, knows the colors outside to be bright and overwhelming. Of course there are fireworks. It is the Fourth of July, after all. There have always been fireworks. He thinks he doesn’t like the fireworks much.

He leaves the Fourth of July, and time leaves him. 

Outside is right, he thinks. The town- or maybe just the existence of it- is bright like sunshine, Henrietta just after rain. Glowing, gently. Glistening from above where he is. Has he always been this high? Likely not, but memory is a luxury he can no longer afford. 

The high is height and not an altered state of mind. Being unaltered is right, Joseph Kavinsky says, but Joseph Kavinsky cannot know enough to think about right and wrong. Not during the Fourth of July.

The steps down are longer than his lifespan and two feet at once- it takes him an infinite never to reach the bottom, but he is pretty sure he does.

He wants to speak, he realises. He would like to fill the silence that booms in this place. That fills his ears and reminds him that whatever he is now, it is sober and then some.

It is with mostly numb hands that he finds his face. The husk of a ghost of sunglasses stop him not at all. His eyes are missing. He doesn't need to see, after all. Who needs sight, petty vision, when the entirety of everything is known to you? He does not need eyes to know, to look, anymore. Some things simply are. Joseph Kavinsky simply is. His mouth is sewn shut. Strands of leather, thick and knotted, running into his upper lip and out his lower jaw, weaving and twisting and tightening. 

He cannot speak, not here. He would think it cruel if not for what he does not know. He has spent his entire life trying to shut down the himself that lives within, but here Joseph Kavinsky can only be muted, not silenced. That knowledge of what he has done to himself- it stays. He knows that if anyone was cruel, it was him.

Joseph Kavinsky is a monster, a devil, a creature almost completely of his own making. He cannot remember what else made him, and Joseph Kavinsky is quiet.

The steps end at nowhere, he thinks. Blood, or maybe something worse, flows out of his ears, but he can't be sure. He has always been his own blind spot. 

This nowhere is infinite, but only in theory. 

Joseph Kavinsky wants more than anything to not be anywhere. Joseph Kavinsky knows that's a lie.

Step forwards, into the nothing. Turn, hear the drop of liquid onto the floor. Kneel, kneel. Something greater than yourself is in charge here, boy. Know when to pay your respects. The dragon rules you in more ways than you can imagine.

He is down, falling, isn't he? Down now, falling through the cracked ice. Something is glowing. He cannot see. He cannot know. Only Joseph Kavinsky can know.

Is he still without time or space? He is nowhere, still, but it is the Fourth of July again.

Can you escape the Fourth of July, Joseph Kavinsky? Joseph Kavinsky thinks not. His sunglasses crack. Or maybe, if he had eyes, his eyes would. But he doesn't have eyes. Joseph Kavinsky saw to that.

It is the Fourth of July, again and yet still. It is the Fourth of July and nowhere and Joseph Kavinsky is crying. There is a door, right there. He points this out, and he ignores him.

The self is always the easiest to ignore.

Joseph Kavinsky makes another life. He's made many. He's ruined many. He's taken, torn, broken, remade. This one is different, perhaps. This one will not be subject to the-

He stops. He is no longer in nowhere. This is a somewhere now, now that he has made the mistake of creating within it. A creation cannot exist without a space to exist in.

Joseph Kavinsky has just ruined himself.

This is it, is it not? He has doomed himself to this life. These are those he has made. He has chained himself to those. 

He should kill them. Joseph Kavinsky, he would love that. Joseph Kavinsky riots, quiet and muted.

They- the creatures, the creations- they live a little more. They do not die, not yet.

It is amazing what nowhere can blossom into upon mistake after mistake. Mistakes are the only descriptor he can bear to use for these, even if those within care for his world in ways Joseph has never comprehended.

Love is not something any Joseph Kavinsky was ever taught.

There are many, now. Many of him, many of them. Time is still, but that stops neither him nor his creations. It is still the Fourth of July. Are they living? It is up to the viewer to decide. The viewer, however, he cannot make up his mind.

What is he here? The viewer, that is. He was the creator of it all, once, during the Fourth of July. Now, in the Fourth of July, what has he become?

He is sitting. He has a body again, at least. Maybe he always had one, but it was not available to him. A locked feature, a hidden cheat code. When was the last time he was made aware of his physical existence? The Fourth of July? Joseph Kavinsky knows that he is not real, not again, not yet. But keep it a secret, won't you? Joseph Kavinsky does not know this yet. 

He is sitting in a white Mitsubishi Evolution in his new but old body. There are two things in his hands- sunglasses and leather bands. He cannot see them, but he knows them. They are his creations, not unlike the creations that pass before him, talking and being everything he said he had given up. Joseph Kavinsky hears, and he shouts, quieted but still there.

Did he cause his own demise? Or did he become it? Does the phoenix die, or is it simply remade? Can you kill what comes back? Is death not permanence? Can you call what the firebird does anything more than a parlor trick? Death is infinity, Joseph Kavinsky- you cannot escape death.

Escaping a magic trick, however, now that's a different story.

The things before him bear a passing resemblance to people. It is not like Joseph Kavinsky can tell, eyeless and all-seeing, confined only to know what he has crafted and what Joseph Kavinsky will let him know.

One creature talks to the other, and it is through the blood, or maybe something worse, that is in his ears that he understands.

They are asking what Joseph Kavinsky has been screaming. They ask each other what he has only ever hoped to find out. 

“What is there beyond this?”

Joseph Kavinsky would hate him. He, Joseph Kavinsky, loves himself. He kills the two. He kills them all. He cannot have his creations thinking of what he cannot bear.

It is with this that he falls again. It is not an easy thing, destroying when you have been creating for as long as the Fourth of July has been. Joseph Kavinsky is disappointed, maddened at how the nightmare of relapsing has happened yet again.

Joseph Kavinsky reminds him that here, all he can be is sober.

He cannot be nowhere again, not after he blew up its infinite and glorious beauty in pursuit of creation. Joseph Kavinsky tells him that it was worth it, but he is still on mute. Not all of what he wants to tell Joseph Kavinsky gets through.

He cannot be nowhere again, but he can be in a corner. A hard one, rocks and rocks and rocks and a hard place, and it is here that he is calm. Calm is an emotion that Joseph Kavinsky did not think he had in him, not while it was still the Fourth of July. He cannot escape the Fourth of July. Joseph Kavinsky cannot escape the Fourth of July.

He tries again, burrowing, but the where continues. The where continues, on and on into the Fourth of July. There is a door behind him, Joseph Kavinsky is saying.

He does not want the door, he tells Joseph Kavinsky. We do not do business with doors, not on the Fourth of July.

But the where is infinite now, and Joseph Kavinsky, all of Joseph Kavinsky, every last bit of him and every last one of them, can only be running out of time. Leaving the Fourth of July is not an option anymore, but joining the fifth is not something Joseph Kavinsky ever thought he'd do.

He stops, giving up and resigning to the where in which he has trapped himself. He is tired, and it is here, in his state of surrender and relaxation, that Joseph Kavinsky breaks free. Joseph Kavinsky has been nothing for so long, a piece of a thought of a whisper, that his state of being and inhabiting is horribly unfamiliar to the point of pain.

Joseph Kavinsky is no stranger to pain- he has spent his whole life searching for it, wanting it, and getting it. It is no problem for Joseph Kavinsky to bear it.

Joseph Kavinsky looks at Joseph Kavinsky and kicks him in the balls.

Joseph Kavinsky goes down with much ado, and Joseph Kavinsky continues. Joseph Kavinsky no longer has eyes, but he still has plenty of hair for Joseph Kavinsky to rip out, plenty of unreal body and form for Joseph Kavinsky to punch at. 

Joseph Kavinsky kicks the Joseph Kavinsky who can still see with whatever is behind those unblemished sunglasses- he kicks him in the ribs.

Joseph Kavinsky falls, but Joseph Kavinsky cannot stand in the same manner that he cannot speak.

He looks at him, and he looks at him.

The door, Joseph Kavinsky says, unsewn mouth making a mockery of Joseph Kavinsky's self-imposed ordeal.

The door is there now. Joseph Kavinsky has long since rid it of its nowhere. It hangs in the air, suspended, waiting.

Joseph Kavinsky cannot stand, but Joseph Kavinsky can. He points at the door, and Joseph Kavinsky snarls his response. Even now, even on the Fourth of July, he cannot speak.

He begins to realise that he will not speak again. Joseph Kavinsky is closer now. He did not move, but the where that Joseph Kavinsky had constructed back during the Fourth of July responds to Joseph Kavinsky just as well as it does to Joseph Kavinsky. Joseph Kavinsky is above him, and suddenly Joseph Kavinsky knows.

He knows that grin, that blankness of opaque sunglasses, that white tank top and gold earring. Joseph Kavinsky is real, or at least will be soon, and all Joseph Kavinsky can do about it is scream through a leather-bound mouth.

Joseph Kavinsky can be as cruel as Joseph Kavinsky was. But even Joseph Kavinsky, eyeless and deformed as he is, knows enough to know the difference.

There is a dragon in the distance, monstrous and horrible and too-familiar, and then it is not. Then it is closer, its own eyeless face peering into Joseph Kavinsky's own ruined husk.

Death is a permanence, Joseph Kavinsky is saying, the words echoing. There are fireworks, far in the distance, as the dragon lands on Joseph Kavinsky's shoulder. It is the Fourth of July, after all.

The dragon is whatever Joseph Kavinsky would have it to be, and Joseph Kavinsky looks again to find a phoenix sat upon Joseph Kavinsky's shoulder.

The two of them- stood there, leering- it trips some fuse within him. He is remembering. Remembering birds, a boy in all black, leather like the leather trapping his mouth. He does not want to remember, but the imagery demands he must.

Joseph Kavinsky is eyeless. He cannot look away.

The phoenix bursts into flames, and then to ashes, but it does not rise again.

Killing a phoenix is not something easily done, but when a world is your own creation and your rules are your own and you may bend and break whatever you please- a phoenix can be killed, in the permanent death that the universe demands and the phoenix so often cheats.

Joseph Kavinsky knows what is to happen to him. Joseph Kavinsky draws closer, moving himself and moving Joseph Kavinsky.

The brittle form of what was once sunglasses is removed from Joseph Kavinsky, and Joseph Kavinsky stands.

Lying there, broken, Joseph Kavinsky cannot close what is not there, but the nigh empty space of subconscious where Joseph Kavinsky once was wishes he could.

It does not have to be the Fourth of July, Joseph Kavinsky says. Joseph Kavinsky cannot reply.

And then Joseph Kavinsky crushes the sunglasses beneath his hands to ash like dragon jaws to a soul. And then at last, there was only Joseph Kavinsky.

The door opens, and it is Joseph Kavinsky who steps through.

*

Joseph Kavinsky wakes with a start, head under a running sink and an ache like nothing else in his chest. There is water in his eyes, tears and otherwise. He is wearing white and there is gold around his neck and he is cold. 

This is a where, and this is a when. This is a gas station bathroom, and this is the fifth of July. 

"Are you alright?" the woman says from the open doorway, and though Joseph can not recognise her, he hears her perfectly.

Joseph's mouth opens, far from sewn, moving back to the cruel smile for a moment before settling somewhere in between evil and apathy.

"I think I might be."

**Author's Note:**

> kavinsky's not dead wdym he's in a gas station somewhere trying to be better and doing his best


End file.
